Top positive review

4.0 out of 5 starsIf you need more than this, you are not even reading this.

Byamazon_princesson November 16, 2015

This is exactly what it is supposed to be-- low cost, consumer grade speaker wire.

We use this to connect our 15-year-old consumer-grade amplifier to our old consumer-grade speakers, to play music and movie sound-tracks streamed over the internet at whatever bit-rate our connection happens to support at the moment. The speakers are placed on whatever flat surface we can find, in whatever arrangement gives us some semblance of stereo and "surround", in a living room where "acoustics" take a back seat to "not having things fall on our heads."

The impedance-matching to the speakers, the cable's power loss, the frequency response, are all 2nd-order optimizations where we are just looking for the first approximation. We just want durable cable that will not break easily if pulled or set-upon, that will not short the amplifier with ordinary use, and whose performance is no worse than the other aspects of our setup. We understand the difference between copper and copper-clad aluminum, and the impact of wire gague on signal fidelity. We have our own multi-meters, oscilliscopes and RMS power meters, and we just don't care.

If you're an audiophile, odds are you are not even sniffing the Amazon Basics, much less reading this review. You are not researching whether this cable will let you hear the timpanist's heartbeat during the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 9th, even though audiophiles claim it can be done. You are too busy putting anti-reflective coating the edges of your CDs and putting your amplifiers on tiny little conical feet. You buy artisan crafted, hand-pulled pure copper cable extracted from sustainable mines by free-range miners, encased in fair-trade gold-foil RF shielding and wrapped with organic cotton-fiber sheath dyed in native traditional patterns.

Top critical review

I would give this product if there consistency amount roles.I bought 3 roles and 2 of them marked the positive wire with a white stripe, the 3rd spool marked the negative wire with a black stripe. None of the rolls marked both.

This is exactly what it is supposed to be-- low cost, consumer grade speaker wire.

We use this to connect our 15-year-old consumer-grade amplifier to our old consumer-grade speakers, to play music and movie sound-tracks streamed over the internet at whatever bit-rate our connection happens to support at the moment. The speakers are placed on whatever flat surface we can find, in whatever arrangement gives us some semblance of stereo and "surround", in a living room where "acoustics" take a back seat to "not having things fall on our heads."

The impedance-matching to the speakers, the cable's power loss, the frequency response, are all 2nd-order optimizations where we are just looking for the first approximation. We just want durable cable that will not break easily if pulled or set-upon, that will not short the amplifier with ordinary use, and whose performance is no worse than the other aspects of our setup. We understand the difference between copper and copper-clad aluminum, and the impact of wire gague on signal fidelity. We have our own multi-meters, oscilliscopes and RMS power meters, and we just don't care.

If you're an audiophile, odds are you are not even sniffing the Amazon Basics, much less reading this review. You are not researching whether this cable will let you hear the timpanist's heartbeat during the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 9th, even though audiophiles claim it can be done. You are too busy putting anti-reflective coating the edges of your CDs and putting your amplifiers on tiny little conical feet. You buy artisan crafted, hand-pulled pure copper cable extracted from sustainable mines by free-range miners, encased in fair-trade gold-foil RF shielding and wrapped with organic cotton-fiber sheath dyed in native traditional patterns.

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I'm a home audio enthusiast, not a recording studio engineer. I re-wired outdoor speakers (wire running through conduit) and used this product with very good results. My longest run is about 25'. Yes, it is copper clad aluminum, but I hesitate to spend top dollar for the more pure copper product. I know that the sound travels on the outside surface of the conductors, and this is why speaker wire is stranded and not solid core. The Amazon Basics 16-ga speaker wire is copper cladding on aluminum, which suits my purpose very well. It has a white tracer in one conductor, speeding up connections and improving accuracy. The insulation is easily removed with wire strippers. It pulls through flexible conduit using a fishing tape without undue headache.

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While I'm sure there are audiophiles who'll quibble, I think this stuff is awesome. It's got enough (but not too much) insulation to make me feel comfortable pulling it through walls. I got this to run through the wall and outside to connect some speakers to the Sony 100w amp we use with our AppleTV so we can play music out on the porch. The wire's nice and thick, easy to work with, and the spool's not ridiculously large. Other than that, the price is right.

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This is not real copper, but it does not claim to be. With that out of the way, this is actually pretty decent cable. It's very flexible and easy to work with. If you are fine with the limitations of copper-clad aluminum (because you're not running that long of a stretch, or you are over-sizing conductors to start with, or you just don't want to pay for 100% copper) then this is actually pretty nice to work with. The insulation is soft and flexible and the cord has a very easy to see black line for the negative conductor. If this were pure OFC copper, it would probably be one of my favorite brands.

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We needed two 50-ft speaker runs for a temp setup during a church renovation, and I cringed a little because I know how expensive speaker wire can get. Then I saw this Basics spool in the search results, and for the price and speed of delivery with prime, I went for it. Wow, by NO means is this cheap cable. I thought they made a mistake and sent me 14-gauge because of how thick it seemed (not that I would mind 14 gauge, lol). There's no reason to spend big bucks when you need 100 ft, this is excellent speaker wire regardless of cost.

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Good speaker wire at a very good price. Sound quality and packaging is good. The price is super reasonable and I'd buy it again if I find myself needing speaker wire again.

The reason I give it 4 Stars is because the markings to identify which wire is which is unusually VERY light. I was daisy chaining speakers together and needed to ensure that the correct wires were going to positive and negative. Both strands of wires are exactly the same but there is a faint white line down one of them. The white line is almost transparent and I need a flashlight to see it. Even with the light it was almost indiscernible. They should definitely look into marking one of the wires more prominently.

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Very good basic speaker wire. Why pay the high price for other wire when this will do everything you need it to do? The shielding is suitable and protects well against interference. The wire is labeled well which provides an easy method for identifying the positive and negative wires. Overall, I think this is a great buy any moderate-level sound system. Those who wish to have completely flawless sound applications may wish to purchase some heavier gauge wire with thicker insulation, but this works well for me!

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It's speaker wire. How can one write a glowing review on speaker wire? I will give it a try.

This came will packaged and looked nice. The package designers did a superb job in designing the package. The wire is very smooth with a clearly marked negative wire. The insulation is nice and think and insulates very well. When solder is applied it takes it well and it appears the copper wire used in this is very high quality copper.

The sound transmission is excellent unlike other copper wire that has noticeably reduced clarity in the high range.

This wire is also much better than those spools of wire that are only 50 feet because this has 100 feet. That makes it twice as good as the 50 foot wire and 4 times better than the 25 foot spools.

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Really decent. I know it's just wire, but this wire is minimalistic (no color on the wires besides small white strips to differentiate (+) and (-) ), and it's enough gauge and enough insulation that you I'm not worried at all about signal interference. I will warn that 100ft did not get me as far as I thought it would. Installing a small bedroom I had EXACTLY enough, so make sure you measure twice before you pull the trigger. Note that this wire is pretty shiny (what looks like pure copper and just a transparent polymer coating), so I would steer clear if you're looking to camouflage the wire into the background.

Monoprice sells a set of 100pc cable clips for a buck or 2 (on Amazon or their website). It's nothing fancy but I would recommend going for those if you want to clean up your wiring a bit.

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This cable works fine but I have one criticism - and so only four stars.

There is no marking on the cable to show which wire is which and that makes it harder to determine speaker polarity. That is, you want the wire connected to red on the amplifier to connect to red on the speaker, and black [or white] to black [or white]. Electric wire like this has ribbing along one side (the neutral one) so you can make sure your lamp is wired up safely. But with this speaker wire you have to follow it all-the-way-along-the-length-of-the-cable.

I guess that's why it's "AmazonBasics". Add some ribbing and this would be much easier to work with. But once installed it works fine.